Interprocessor Communications

Speed and integration fuel chip-level interconnect debates
Chip-to-chip interconnect continues to be a sector brimming with activity on multiple fronts as engineers relentlessly go for higher speeds at the board level and set their system-on-chip strategies.
One of the less well-known debates in chip-to-chip interconnect is happening inside wireless systems. Here engineers are discussing whether they want to integrate RF and digital subsystems into an SoC or optimize those components as discrete elements. Noman Rangwala of Analog Devices Inc. argues for the latter approach in an article describing a new interface standard from Jedec for linking RF and digital subsystems.
Looking further into the future, Robert Drost of Sun Microsystems Research laboratories provides an update on Sun's Proximity interconnect, a wireless chip-to-chip link still in the R&D stage.